Norma Rae
Martin Ritt (1979)
Norma Rae is a fictionalised account of the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton, an American labour union organiser and the subject of Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance, a 1975 book by the New York Times journalist Hank Leifermann. Sutton (as Leifermann’s subtitle implies) was the latest generation of her family to work in textile mills owned by the J P Stevens & Company in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. She was provoked to activism by ‘the paltry wages, the bone-tiring work and the stingy benefits that she and her parents had suffered’ and by ‘want[ing] something better for her children’ (Wikipedia). In 1978, she was fired by the company after trying to unionise fellow mill employees. Sutton was vindicated when, later that same year, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union began to represent workers at the plant. Only a few months subsequently, Martin Ritt’s film opened in American cinemas.
The screenplay is by the husband and wife team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr, who wrote several Ritt films, most famously Hud (1963). Norma Rae retains the North Carolina setting even though the location filming actually took place in Alabama. The titular heroine is a thirty-year-old single mother of a young daughter and son (from two different fathers: one died, the second is alive but absent). At the start of the film, Norma Rae (Sally Field) and her kids live with her father, Vernon (Pat Hingle). He and Norma’s mother (Barbara Baxley) – both, like their daughter, work at the O P Henley cotton mill – appear to be separated. Norma’s life changes with the arrival in it of two very different men. Union organiser Ruben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman), a high-strung, hyper-articulate New Yorker, arrives in town on an assignment to try and unionise the mill’s workforce. Despite Norma’s antipathy to management, the first exchanges between her and Ruben are fractious; a rousing speech he makes to mill workers is a turning point in their relationship. Norma also has an early run-in with Sonny Webster (Beau Bridges), who used to work at Henley’s. Divorced and with a child of his own, Sonny starts dating Norma and she accepts his speedy proposal of marriage.
Her performance in Norma Rae landed Sally Field the first of her two Best Actress Oscars. The second came five years later, for Robert Benton’s Places in the Heart. In that film, Field, with her open face and determined gait, was too obviously cast as an indomitable widow and mother. Norma Rae is indomitable, too, but Martin Ritt uses Field’s unaffected prettiness more imaginatively. Unlike the heroine of Places in the Heart, Norma isn’t a model of good behaviour: she goes to the local Baptist church and sings in the choir but also has a reputation for sleeping around. Field’s straightforward acting, a limitation in Places in the Heart, really works for her in Norma Rae. She’s especially good at suggesting that Norma isn’t politically transformed by Reuben; that he supplies her, rather, with the means to act productively on feelings she already had.
Norma Rae achieves a satisfying balance of involving storyline and convincing characters. This goes not just for the protagonist but also for the two main male roles, despite the fact that one of them might seem overwritten and the other underwritten. Reuben has an awful lot to say: since Norma does, too, you’re bound to suspect wordiness is a quality of Ravetch and Frank’s writing as much as of the people delivering their lines. Yet Ron Leibman persuades you that verboseness is natural to Reuben – a necessary part of the combative energy that keeps him going. For a while, Sonny looks to be in the film chiefly to underline the inevitable conflict between Norma Rae’s roles as wife and mother, and her increasing involvement in union activities. But a kitchen showdown between them – when Sonny complains she’s not keeping house and Norma reacts with furious, physically demonstrative sarcasm – ends with him capitulating: he loves her even when she’s angry. It’s a clichéd idea, elevated by Beau Bridges’s native warmth and authenticity. In a much later scene, Sonny asks Norma if she’s slept with Reuben. She says no (which is true) but admits ‘he’s in my head’. Sonny replies that he’ll stand by her come what may and that ‘there’s nobody else in my head’. He speaks the words sincerely but they also seem to say, ‘Whether you like it or not’. Her husband’s response registers strongly with Norma.
Two episodes are designed as dramatic highlights. The first is the better of the two and Norma Rae‘s best-known scene. Henley management tries to arrest the momentum of the unionising campaign by creating divisions between white and black members of the workforce, posting notices that contain racially insulting language. On Reuben’s instructions, Norma copies the notices verbatim, to use as evidence for federal authority sanctions against the mill. She’s fired on the spot for creating a disturbance in the workplace; the police are called to remove her from the premises. Before they arrive, Norma writes ‘UNION’ on a piece of cardboard, stands on a table and shows it to her co-workers. One by one, they turn off their machines as a sign of solidarity. Ritt makes the noise of the machinery an important element throughout the narrative: its effect on the workforce is literally deafening for them on occasion, and they always have to shout to make themselves heard above it. Because the noise has functioned as a persistent reminder of inimical working conditions, the eventual silence of this sequence is highly effective.
The second big moment is the announcement of the result of the ballot to unionise the Henley plant. The workforce, totalling around eight hundred, votes by a majority of nearly a hundred in favour of unionisation. Like the preceding set piece, this one delivers emotionally but it’s conventional, and the film’s ending feels rushed: the farewell scene between Norma Rae and Reuben, before he drives off back to New York, follows too instantly on the ballot result. It’s very well played, though, by Sally Field and Ron Leibman. As Reuben tells Norma how much he thinks of her, both actors’ faces show that the characters’ feelings for each other run deeper than their words suggest – but they part with a disciplined handshake rather than a kiss. Earlier on, Reuben lent Norma a book of Dylan Thomas poems. A weaker detail in the closing sequence is Norma’s telling Reuben she’s now bought her own copy – it’s too pat a summary of her enlightenment, and Reuben’s role in it.
It’s evident that some of those in small parts are local people, playing more or less themselves. There’s an occasional imbalance between this group and professional actors in minor roles – as one of the mill workers, Grace Zabriskie sticks out as consciously histrionic. On the whole, though, Martin Ritt handles the varied cast skilfully. He does well to show management, and others hostile to Norma and Reuben and what they’re trying to do, communicating this through their physical stance rather than a theatrically scowling face. The oppressive summer heat of the setting is successfully conveyed in persistent sweat patches on clothing, and shortened tempers. The opening and closing titles are accompanied by a dreary song, ‘It Goes Like It Goes’, written by David Shire and Norman Gimbel, and sung by Jennifer Warnes. (The chorus – ‘So it goes like it goes and the river flows/And time it rolls right on/And maybe what’s good gets a little bit better/And maybe what’s bad gets gone’ – gives a flavour of the whole.) This wimpy creation, which won Norma Rae its other Academy Award, isn’t typical of a strong picture that has aged well. The film-makers’ left-of-centre standpoint is clear throughout. It’s nonetheless refreshing in 2020 to watch a political screen drama in which the characters’ moral standing derives not from their basic ‘identity’ but from what they choose to do.
5 October 2020